Earl
Supporting Member
Thanks, yes I get blamed for everything, including hijacking the Krivo thread!Nice playing! Now I’m going to have to change the top three. If I don’t like them and have to go back, I’ll blame you.
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Double Bass Krivo first impressions
- Thread starter raskalnickoff
- Start date
……….Krivo/fixed it
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Earl
Supporting Member
I thought the Dolces were green silks, these look blue like the mediums. Maybe the photo.View attachment 4650736 Nope! Not hijacking at all. I just put all the Jargars back. They ARE dark. I’m going to play them for a few weeks anyways. The huge difference is these are Dolces, should have bought the mediums. They feel rubbery, gonna slow me down some. But the silks all match.
AFAIK the Schaller is discontinued.
I had one with my first bass before it got stolen.
It is a single coil design, so sensitive to electrical noise. Not that it happened the few times I used it, but there are better designs out now.
I got feedback via top and strings when things got loud (or I misplaced the cab as a beginner). So no squeaking, but unwanted string resonances if I didn’t damp the strings all the time they needed to be damped.
And that was a plywood instrument. I guess on a carved or hybrid instrument it would have been worse.
I had one with my first bass before it got stolen.
It is a single coil design, so sensitive to electrical noise. Not that it happened the few times I used it, but there are better designs out now.
I got feedback via top and strings when things got loud (or I misplaced the cab as a beginner). So no squeaking, but unwanted string resonances if I didn’t damp the strings all the time they needed to be damped.
And that was a plywood instrument. I guess on a carved or hybrid instrument it would have been worse.
The advantage is that the Krivo is readily available (Gollihur Music) easy to install, looks and works nicely without any preamp, filter or other complication. Who could ask for more?
I had first hand experience with the Schiller as a St.Louis luthier and Jazz bassist used them on his basses and installed them on others.
IME the Schaller was very susceptible to AC line interference on concert hall stages with FOH lighting. It also mounts with screws that have to
be carefully installed into the side of the finger board. Precision Bass pickups were designed for the string spacing and radius of a bass guitar
neck and finger board. Special care has to be used in adapting those pickups to a Double Bass.
Additionally, the pole pieces, magnets and windings are engineered to work with bass guitar strings which are smaller in diameter and shorter in length than double bass strings. It will work but the Krio will work much better and install and in mount much easier.
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There is a general problem with magnetic pickups which sense anywhere in the “middle” of a string:
The sound is not representative compared to the vibration pressing onto the bridge.
Why? Because any partial with a vibrational knot at the pickup position doesn’t get picked up at all. A position close to it only gets much less volume of that partial compared to the other ones.
So the best pickup position for a realistic string vibration is at either end of the vibrating string, for practical purposes at the bridge. Unfortunately the vibration is very small there, too small to get a useable passive signal. And the signal-to-noise-ratio is worst there.
If you don’t care about the sound be abuse other things get more important (like feedback), take a magnetic one, but no magnetic pickup at the end of the fingerboard can change acoustics.
The other thing is the bowing problem. Pickups with only one sensing direction per string work only well with pizzicato, since the bowing vibration almost keeps the same distance to the magnetic field.
It might be better with two sensors per string in a 90 degree angle, but only possible to put below the strings for practical purposes.
There is a good reason why basses (specially EUBs) typically have a piezo too if they have a magnetic pickup.
The magnetic pickup limits the use of a bass and changes the sound, which might not be a problem for a certain special use case or when a piezo pickup becomes unusable.
I hated my first piezo pickup, but it was mainly my fault. I crammed in a tight bridge wing which let it sound “under pressure” and put it into a 330 KOhms Polytone Mini-Brute II amp. But I learned a lot during the last three decades.
Finally I widened the bridge slots just a tiny bit, the pickup sits very loose, just tight enough that it doesn’t fall out by gravity or when shaking the bass. In the mean time I used it with the bad sound, either played hardly at all or tried a different pickup (Shadow NFX).
I only bought the Schaller in urgent need of a pickup from our local music store, because I couldn’t get the Barcus Berry (which was the only other one in stock) working with my guitar amp that I had during high school.
The sound is not representative compared to the vibration pressing onto the bridge.
Why? Because any partial with a vibrational knot at the pickup position doesn’t get picked up at all. A position close to it only gets much less volume of that partial compared to the other ones.
So the best pickup position for a realistic string vibration is at either end of the vibrating string, for practical purposes at the bridge. Unfortunately the vibration is very small there, too small to get a useable passive signal. And the signal-to-noise-ratio is worst there.
If you don’t care about the sound be abuse other things get more important (like feedback), take a magnetic one, but no magnetic pickup at the end of the fingerboard can change acoustics.
The other thing is the bowing problem. Pickups with only one sensing direction per string work only well with pizzicato, since the bowing vibration almost keeps the same distance to the magnetic field.
It might be better with two sensors per string in a 90 degree angle, but only possible to put below the strings for practical purposes.
There is a good reason why basses (specially EUBs) typically have a piezo too if they have a magnetic pickup.
The magnetic pickup limits the use of a bass and changes the sound, which might not be a problem for a certain special use case or when a piezo pickup becomes unusable.
I hated my first piezo pickup, but it was mainly my fault. I crammed in a tight bridge wing which let it sound “under pressure” and put it into a 330 KOhms Polytone Mini-Brute II amp. But I learned a lot during the last three decades.
Finally I widened the bridge slots just a tiny bit, the pickup sits very loose, just tight enough that it doesn’t fall out by gravity or when shaking the bass. In the mean time I used it with the bad sound, either played hardly at all or tried a different pickup (Shadow NFX).
I only bought the Schaller in urgent need of a pickup from our local music store, because I couldn’t get the Barcus Berry (which was the only other one in stock) working with my guitar amp that I had during high school.
There was also the Pierre Joseph String Charger endorsed by NHØP. I believe the Krivo is a copy of it. I bought mine out of the back of Bass Player magazine as a last resort because all Piezos sound like trash on my bass. It’s a great pickup though, and designed to be microphonic on purpose I think I recall hearing somewhere. For reference here is an expired reverb listing, it has good pics. The magnet itself is flexible to match your fingerboard radius, and there is an RCA Jack next to the 1/4in out in order to add an optional piezo element as well. The website and any info about it seems to have been wiped from the internet. Pierre Josephs String Charger | Reverb
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I doubt that the piezo input of the String Charger is really useable. The impedance of the magnetic pickup is probably in the KOhms range and even if there would be a transformer, the input impedance of the transformer would be too low too for a good piezo sound. Not a good solution from the knowledge of today, but that design (as well as the Schaller) is really old.
The Schaller had adjustable ferromagnetic elements for each string to adjust the volume for each string.
From the picture of the String Charger mentioned before I can only see that the whole pickup might be adjustable in position and angle, but not for each string individually.
The Schaller had adjustable ferromagnetic elements for each string to adjust the volume for each string.
From the picture of the String Charger mentioned before I can only see that the whole pickup might be adjustable in position and angle, but not for each string individually.
you are correct that it isn’t individually adjustable, you are just able change the curve to match your fingerboard. As far as the piezo input, there is possibly space in that cylinder where the 1/4 Jack resides for a small transformer. I seem to vaguely remember that the piezo feature was a proprietary add-on due to the RCA connection. Since I couldn’t find a piezo that would sound good on my bass I never considered it, and Besides a few reverb ads and the legend of NHØP using one, I’ve never even heard of anyone else using the string charger.
I don‘t know any transformer with an impedance of 1 MegOhms or larger. If there is a small transformer in it it might only make it slightly better than without it connected parallel to the magnetic pickup.
But that design is old, so the knowledge about piezo pickups and the impedance load needed might have been missed at that time.
I know at one time Bill Laurence was working on a pickup for double bass that would sense strings with non metallic cores. Apparently
he couldn’t get it to work.
he couldn’t get it to work.
Makes me wonder if something like the Lightwave system would work. Probably would but mounting it wouldn’t work at all.
Pretty much anything into Avalon U5 is very nice!
It makes the Realist Copper foil sound like a different pickup. I know a few TB players who used to carry one around as their preamp. Just my take.Carrying it as my preamp is exactly what's going to happen. I've got a 31-band equalizer that has both HPF & LPF getting delivered today. In spite of having Lifelines and ETL Nadine, I'm trying to fully adopt the Krivo as my main transducer for this year's gigs. Last week, three different people commented on how nice my bass sounded. Hmmm, that was cool. There are tradeoffs, but the simplicity and ability to easily get loud enough make it #1 right now. OP has first impressions and I have latest impressions.
I guess if I had anything but my Grace Designs Felix, then the Avalon U5 would be on my radar. I recently had to do a live recording and we had to use the signal from my pickup, the Ehrlund EAP and it sounded pretty great, maybe not microphone great
but way better than anything I've recorded live before this. The Grace has it's thing so does the Avalon. There both exceptional boxes.
but way better than anything I've recorded live before this. The Grace has it's thing so does the Avalon. There both exceptional boxes.
